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Published: December 1st 2008
Despite a fairly restless night I managed to wake up and get some breakfast, meeting up with the other members of the group. The bloke I was sharing a room with had just arrived from Iran, there were two girls from the UK who I had caught the taxi with, a German girl whose luggage had gone missing, an Irish girl, and a couple from South Africa.
We caught a train up to Aleppo, which took about 4 hours through scenery which started off as desert then changed to farmland and then back to desert. We travelled first class, which meant lots of leg room and was apparently absurdly cheap (for us). No T.E. Lawrence along the way so we arrived about midday in Aleppo.
We wandered around town with our tour leader who found us some food and took us up to the Grand Souk, a medieval shopping mall - a narrow mile-long covered street going uphill with hundreds of shops and people trying to sell us things we really didn't want (!). Interesting and really quite hectic. We emerged from the tunnel at the Citadel and waited for the other members of the group to emerge (we had got quite separated). We visiteda medieval hospital-museum and then the grand mosque, where we all had to remove our shoes and the ladies had to wear cloaks which made them look like Harry Potter characters.
I was having trouble getting money out of ATMs, having worked out that the small amount I had withdrawn the night before was nowhere near enough. After trying several machines I decided the problem might be my bank cancelling the card rather than the machines. The tour leader has some suggestions, but none of them panned out.
Meanwhile he had been meeting up with another group that came in from Turkey. We merged and went out for dinner before walking around the Armenian quarter, the Christian architecture contrasting with the Muslim buildings in the rest of the city.
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Anne
non-member comment
Your blog
Ed, glad to read that you have arrived safely. I've sent Martin the link to your blog so he too can keep up-to-date with your travel. I hope you manage to get some cash soon, otherwise, you may end up eating those cereal bars a lot quicker than you had expected. I can't wait for you to upload some photos: I'm very envious from just read your blog.